William C. Daniels, Scientist

Category Archives: Field Work

I’d be hard pressed to find a better way to decompress from my NASA-HERA mission than a field expedition to the Arctic. I went from 6 weeks in a 600 square foot pod to 2 weeks in the vast expanses of Greenland’s fjords and tundra. And it was wonderful. I’ll share some photos and experiences here.

A panoramic view of Sillisit and Tunulliarfik Fjord

From June 29 to July 11, 2018, I traveled with a research group from University of Massachusetts to South Greenland in a scientific campaign to calibrate paleoclimate proxies. The overarching goal of the project, which is led by UMass professors Isla Castañeda and Ray Bradley, is to test the hypothesis that climate change may have forced the exodus of Norse settlers from Greenland around the year 1450 AD. Sediment cores have already been collected, and our efforts this field season were to collect soil, sediment, and plant samples in order to improve our understanding of leaf wax and GDGT systematics in these Arctic systems. Continue reading →

Well, this is my last full week at the University of Massachusetts before I take a 2 month leave-of-absence to participate in the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) mission at theJohnson Space Center in Houston, TX. I will be living with 3 others in the HERA habitat for 45 days, during which time we will have very limited contact with the outside world, eat delicious freeze-dried foods, shower in a ‘hygiene module’, and simulate flying a spaceship. Weird? Exciting! Continue reading →

Urban ecosystems and green spaces are paramount to the mental well-being of communities. Lakes and ponds in particular provide a critical venue for recreational opportunities from swimming and fishing in the summer, to ice-skating in the winter, and in some cases provided drinking water to local communities. Because of their proximity to residential and industrial developments, urban ponds are also vulnerable to local sources of pollution such as road and lawn runoff and factory effluent. No pond typifies both the importance and vulnerability of urban ponds better than Providence’s Mashapaug Pond. Continue reading →

Well, classes are wrapping up at Brown and my official duties as Limnology TA are done. But my unofficial duties aren’t complete until I get some more awesome limno field trip pictures online. The class does two trips to Pout Pond (Belmont, NH) each year. The first trip is in winter (see previous post), and the second trip, shown here, is in spring.

Hi. I hope that my abundance of field-work related pictures does not lead you to believe this is all I do. The vast majority of my time is spent in the lab or on the computer analyzing samples and data, and making figures and writing. These are all very exciting things to do. None-the-less, I am sharing more field work pictures because they are prettier. Two field projects I helped with this spring involved sediment coring in Rhode Island. Continue reading →

This blog is about the Kaktovik Oceanography Program and the wonderful experience I had volunteering with the program in 2015. The KOP is an annual week-long natural science camp for local students in the town of Kaktovik, Alaska. It is hosted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (thanks Greta Burkhart and Allyssa Morris), and largely coordinated by Ken Dunton’s research group from University of Texas. Students spend the week thinking about ecosystems, evolution, geology, etc., and do a lot of hands-on field work in the local lagoons and coastal habitats. Our goal was to show the participants that doing science is not only important and interesting, but also fun and a potentially viable career path. Continue reading →

Map of the ponds within Roger Williams Park (inset shows location of RWP within Rhode Island). We monitor Cunliffe Pond.

Today Brown geology grads, undergrads, and postdocs celebrated our third successful season with the URI Watershed Watch program. The WW, coordinated by the URI cooperative extension, monitors about 120 RI water bodies on a weekly basis from May to October, all through the volunteer efforts of RI citizens. The long-term data (>20 years for some lakes) are used to assess restoration efforts, pollution impacts, climate change impacts, etc. Full information can be found at the URI-WW website. Continue reading →